1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique such as capsule endoscopy, which moves autonomously or heteronomously within the body of a subject and performs display processing of a plurality of information imaged over time, and to a maintenance technique of successively shot image data captured by such an automatic traveling type imaging device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Lesions of luminal organs such as the esophagus and gastrointestinal organs include bleeding, tissue damage, vascular anomalies, Crohn's disease, polyps and so forth, for example. When these lesions develop, most of them cause changes in the intraluminal surface color and the intraluminal surface structure.
A processing unit, suggested in view of this fact, has the features of a transmitter with an imaging function which is released into the luminal organs in search of the presence/absence of a lesion or the cause of a lesion, receiving image data transmitted from the transmitter with an imaging function, analyzing whether or not a calorimetric abnormality is observed by comparison of the received image with at least one reference value, and generating an index of the possibility of a lesion (see Patent Document 1, for example). The device is an endoscope of the type that is swallowed, and thus is called a capsule endoscope.
The capsule endoscope comprises an imaging function and a wireless communication function, and sequentially captures images of organs such as the stomach and intestines, and performs wireless transmission of the captured image data (electronic data representing the images) in series during the observation period, that is from the time it is swallowed by a patient from his/her mouth to the time it is passed out of the human body, for the purpose of an observation or an examination.
The image information transmitted by wireless in the above manner is received by a receiver provided outside the patient's body and is compiled in prescribed memory and later by reading and displaying the information on a display as needed, the information can be of use when a doctor makes a diagnosis or on other occasions.
However, in such a capsule endoscope, unlike conventional endoscopes, because the observation period or examination period is the time period from being swallowed by the patient until being naturally passed out of the body, the observational period and examination period may last for a long time, more than 10 hours for example, and therefore the number of image information acquired by imaging during the period is potentially enormous.
In these circumstances, during the stages of a diagnosis etc., it is not easy to comprehend such a large number of image information in a short period, and it is also not an easy task to locate the image information of a part intended to be focused on, or more specifically image information exclusively of an organ intended to be diagnosed or image information related to an image capturing an ailing part etc. from an enormous number of image information.
In view of the above historical situation, a first object that the present invention aims to achieve is to provide a display processor, a display processing method, and a display processing program for image information, which enables the easy comprehension of a number of image information and the location of image information in which a position intended to be focused on and ailing parts etc. are imaged from a number of image information.
The technique disclosed in the above Patent Document 1 has the central feature of analyzing a calorimetric abnormality and generating an index of the possibility that a lesion is present, and is supposed to be able to display the positions of an image and a capsule (a transmitter with an imaging function and a capsule endoscope) on a single monitor; however, how the positions of the image and the capsule are displayed is not described, and the description lacks an operation of the above processor for displaying the positions of the image and the capsule on a single monitor. Therefore, by the device and method described in the document alone, it is in practice difficult to realize display of the positions of the image and the capsule on a single monitor.
In general, a status of processing is commonly displayed in a progress bar, and in such a progress bar, a progress mark on a horizontal bar moves sequentially from the left to the right (from the bottom to the top in a case of a vertical bar). When the bar progresses to the end, processing is terminated. However, although such a display by a progress bar can indicate time progress or the percentage of processing completed, the location currently being processed of the processed subject cannot be indicated.
Likewise, the technique disclosed in the above Patent Document 1, does not provide any system to indicate the processing status that is the location in the luminal organs of the body, when performing image processing such as extracting a particular image from a number of images.
In view of the above situation, a second object of the present invention is to provide a successive image filing device, a successive image data processing method, and a successive image data processing program, which enables the recording of successive image data captured by an automatic traveling type imaging device in association with focus position information of the automatic traveling type imaging device, and to make the status of the image processing readily visible in the process of image processing, in which the recorded successive image data is extracted according to a certain criterion.
Patent Document 1: US Patent Published Application No. 2002/0177779A1